


The Stuff of Legends

by Deannie



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Deaf Clint Barton, Gen, Not Post-Avengers Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2016-01-15
Packaged: 2018-05-14 03:24:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5727877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So... No Nat to the rescue. No Iron Man. Just one deaf superhero without bow or gun.</p><p>The stuff of legends, right?</p><p>Or, Clint Barton don't need no hearing aids to kick ass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stuff of Legends

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AisforAWKWARD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AisforAWKWARD/gifts).



> For A, who loves her some Deaf!Clint.
> 
> Dean's deaf writing conventions (for those who may have forgotten): **This is lip read text,** (THIS IS SIGN LANGUAGE.)

The op had been going so _well_! Clint thought to himself. Infiltrate the secret lab, upload the information on the evil scientist’s hard drives, get out, right? 

Or infiltrate, upload, and get blown sideways by a grenade, apparently. By the time he regained consciousness, the two goons who had been protecting the lab were an even dozen and they all wanted to know why he was there. And damn it, the force of the explosion had either dislodged completely or broken one of his hearing aids. 

Those things cost a fortune—Stark was going to kill him. 

“You’ll talk, you son of a bitch,” the largest one—alpha male all the way—told him coldly, bringing him back to reality with a thick, evil voice he heard only on the left side of his head. They had rifled through his goodies while he was unconscious but hadn’t bothered to strip him before they tied him to a chair. Mistake number one. Alpha was playing with his phone, looking at the blank screen and trying to randomly crack his passcode. Mistake number two. 

“Eventually,” he answered quietly. _Once Nat gets here._

Alpha put the phone on the table and leaned into his face. Jesus, the man needed to brush! “Who sent you?” he grated menacingly. 

Clint just stared at him and watched his nostrils flare at the prolonged silence. 

“Oh! Now?” he asked once the man’s face had started to turn an interesting shade of purple. “Sorry, no. Not now. I’ll talk later, is what I meant. Once I’m out of here.” 

Alpha grinned. “You will never be out of here.” 

Alpha male he might be, but the guy wasn’t afraid to delegate. A slightly smaller—which is to say only twice as large as Clint himself—guard stepped up and slammed a fist hard against Clint’s cheek. He didn’t bother to brace himself, as the high back on the chair caused his head to rock sideways instead of back. 

And then a really stupid thing happened. As he snapped to the side, Clint felt hearing aid number two slide right out and sail away to parts unknown. 

Well that was just great, wasn’t it? Stark was getting an earful when Clint got out of here, he thought, as silence enveloped him. Should the damn things _be_ so slippery? 

**Make sure our new friend is comfortable,** Alpha said, looking straight at Clint in a scary way that was great for lip reading. **Dr. Gaudet will be here soon.**

He held in a snort. Well good. That meant they could bag Gaudet as well. Fiddling with a StarkPhone was never wise, especially when the one you were fiddling with was programmed to send out a SHIELD and Avengers distress signal if you did. Any minute now, Nat would be swooping in to save his ass. 

He was expecting to be left tied up. Even to be blindfolded or something, which would put him at a decided disadvantage with his hearing aids gone, but wasn’t completely insurmountable. What he wasn’t expecting was for the guy who’d lost him his hearing to look down at him with a hungry, vicious look and say, **Understood** , to something his broken ears obviously missed. 

The fist that struck his cheek in exactly the same place as the last caused a crack Clint couldn’t hear. The blow was followed by others and things got hazy. 

***** 

The pain in his head said it must have been a while since Second in Command started in on him. Clint was dizzy and sore, and the world was fuzzy and indistinct around him. 

Where the hell was Nat? Jesus, at this point he’d take friggin’ Iron Man swooping in to save the day. 

A hand grabbed his chin in the utter silence, and he realized from the irritation on the new face in front of him that the guy must have been trying to talk to him for a while. It wasn’t Clint’s fault the damn aids fell out. _Blame your lackeys,_ he thought. 

He squinted to get a not-completely-sucky look at the asshole in front of him and sighed. Gaudet, who had seemed in his dossier photo to be an almost cliché bad guy, was even moreso in person. 

**I peck you are not feeding soul,** Gaudet said, all evil-scientist-y and superior even in silence. **Perhaps wheel starfish something pimple.**

Okay, not right—lip reading for the lose. Probably had a German accent, just because that was the way Nazi-looking guys in jackboots should talk. Which brought up the fact that Fury _didn’t_ have a German accent but did wear jackboots… which was probably the multiple blows to the head talking. 

Whatever. The fact was that the guy obviously wanted information on who sent him and what his objective was and all that crap, but Clint couldn’t tell because he was too damn dizzy and unfocused to read him right. 

**Reno … otter … Gordon wheezer … you?**

Okay…. Um… Gorgon research. Got that much. He’d also already uploaded it to the SHIELD database before he was captured, so it was kind of a moot point. The rest was probably Gaudet asking who sent him. 

“Your mother,” he replied. “She wants her housecoat back.” 

The answering blow from Alpha—who appeared out of Clint’s left field of vision too suddenly, as things often did when he couldn’t hear them coming—nearly landed the chair on its side on the floor, but Clint was sticking to his guns. Gaudet’s jacket was long and embroidered and might have actually been a sort of dark pink if you squinted. Looked like something his grandmother had worn. 

**You ink … fun … main …**

Clint tuned out. It was impossible to follow the guy when he couldn’t see straight, and he was sure the actual content of Gaudet’s speech would amount to the bad guy equivalent of “blah blah blah.” It was time to get out of here by himself. 

The security alert his phone sent out was nearly foolproof—unless you were deep underground or in a shielded facility. This was obviously one of those. Which meant no Nat. No Iron Man. 

Just one deaf superhero without a bow or a gun. 

Stuff of legends, right? 

Alpha smacked him surprisingly lightly in the head and Clint clued back in to what was being said. Alpha had a great set of lips and even seeing double, Clint could read him clearly. 

**Maybe we should take him into the next room, Dr. Gaudet,** he suggested, a sadistic smile on his face. **Soften his resolve?**

**As Jewish waiting,** Gaudet said—maybe—gesturing Alpha to the side. Second in Command grabbed Clint roughly and dragged him along through a door in the side wall, making him aware of what might have been a couple of cracked or broken ribs on the right side. Probably happened while he was borderline unconscious earlier. 

In the next room was a large basin, full of water. Freezing water, as it turned out when they repeatedly dunked Clint’s aching head into it. He’d been drowned before, actually—a couple of times. But those were before he’d lost his hearing and it was both different and far less terrifying somehow, not to hear the sucking, rushing sound of the liquid that would likely kill you. 

His head was pulled back out of the water and Alpha was in his face again. **Who sent you?**

Clint just stared, since Alpha had already proven he hated that. 

The water wasn’t quite as refreshing the second time around. Clint had really had enough of this crap. 

“Okay!” he screamed, hoping it sounded as desperate and pained as he wanted it to. “I’ll talk! Please!” 

He was thrown to the ground, because bad guys tend to be stupid that way, and proceeded to scissor kick Alpha and plant a heel in his neck once he was down, crushing his windpipe with his stocking foot. Because of course, while they’d taken his boots, they hadn’t bothered to tie his legs. Mistake number three. 

Only Second in Command and Dr Gaudet were visible in the room, and SiC clearly had orders not to shoot, which meant Clint was able to get to his feet and rush him. But not before Gaudet could turn tail and run to, no doubt, raise the alarm with the other ten guys he’d seen since he’d woken. 

Shit. 

SiC went down with a roundhouse kick to the head that hurt Clint like a son of a bitch. The goon also had a knife on him, which took care of the rope holding Clint’s arms, as well as any hope Second had of living long enough to regain consciousness. Clint wished he had time to go looking for his bow, but he was actually still hoping that Nat would— 

He grinned as a receiver sewn into the hip of his pants started buzzing at irregular intervals. “About damn time, Nat,” he muttered. She’d probably figured the receiver was safer than trying to use the radio and giving him away. Clint gave himself a minute to breathe and have his colossal headache while he “listened” to the Morse code. 

`SE corner big boom`

Awesome. That’d be helpful if he knew where he was in the building. An abrupt and massive vibration had him staggering while dust fell from the ceiling. It was loud enough for him to just barely hear with his naked ears. What the hell kind of ordinance was she packing!? 

He grabbed SiC’s rifle and gun and peeked out the door, ducking back in as he spied two figures at the far end of the corridor and saw a puff of concrete on the wall where a bullet had hit. 

While being drowned was apparently more pleasant when deaf, he really hated silent gunfights. He’d practiced them a lot, because shit like _this_ could actually happen, and he just hated the whole feeling of unreality they gave him as he traded soundless fire with an opponent. 

It also made it difficult to keep an eye on the other end of the corridor. He stood a very real chance of being shot in the back by assailants he’d never hear coming. There were a few of them hiding in the shadows as it turned out, but in the end, Clint had a new bullet hole in his shoulder and the four guards had matching ones in their brains. 

That left six plus Gaudet. He didn’t have enough bullets for this. 

He stuck his head carefully farther out into the hallway and saw—almost a second too late—Dr. Gaudet take aim at him with a tiny pistol. He raised his own purloined firearm and felt it click on an empty round. 

Gaudet dropped to the floor dead anyway, his gun skittering silently into the darkness and Clint blinked, spinning around a little too unsteadily and staring at an unbelievably unfocused version of Nat, who was walking down the hall toward him, talking. 

“Thanks,” he said, not knowing if it was loud enough for her to hear. His head really hurt. “I was out of bullets.” He lid down the doorjamb to sit on the floor, his shoulder throbbing now he thought about it. “All the bad guys gone?” 

She knelt next to him and kept saying stuff as she checked out the new bullet hole. 

“No ears. And no talking,” he said. He might be a little loopy too, come to think of it. “Waaaaay too dizzy for that.” 

(BAD GUYS ARE GONE. WAS GOING TO ASK IF YOU’RE HURT,) she signed. There was concern in her eyes, but still the usual fond annoyance that let Clint know he wasn’t likely to bleed out before they got to help. (OBVIOUSLY…) She gestured to him. 

“I’ve had worse,” he said. She gave him that glare that said A) even if he had, that wasn’t an excuse, and B) he was probably slurring so badly she couldn’t understand his words any better than he could understand hers. 

Which was fair because, now that the adrenalin was wearing off, he really felt like crap. 

“Do you have a ride?” he asked limply. “The hike up here was killer.” 

(STARK,) she signed. 

“Awesome, “ he replied, letting her help him to his feet and loop his arm over her shoulder. “Where is he? And where’s my bow?” 

She watched him for a second and said something that read vaguely like, **Mocha gem carrot few inject,**

“Yeah, okay,” he replied, letting his head fall forward as they limped along. “We’ll talk later.” 

****** 

_Both of them are in the quinjet._ That made a lot more sense. 

Clint waved at Stark, who had the Iron Man helmet off his face and was looking concerned and talking. Clint could barely read the guy when he wasn’t sporting a migraine, so he crawled onto a bench and closed his eyes, glad to be untied and free and safe, for the moment. 

  

Nat’s touch on his shoulder woke him some time later and he looked up to see her checking the bandage on his bullet hole. Checking, not putting it on. He’d obviously been out a while. 

(GOOD NAP?) she signed teasingly. 

He smirked at her in return, feeling better than he had in a long while, and looked around. Stark was out of his suit and wearing a Metallica t-shirt and jeans. He’d been flying, but either Nat called to him to tell him Clint was awake, or he’d been watching the internals. He engaged the autopilot and headed toward them, pulling out a familiar little black box. 

Clint levered himself up and sat on the edge of the cot, wiling his head to stop throbbing. He smiled big and grabbed for the box, ignoring the pain in his shoulder. The hearing aids slipped in and activated as soon as their sensors read them being in the right place. 

“Thanks,” he said, really meaning it. “How’d you find them?” 

“I didn’t,” Stark said. “These are your backups.” 

“I have backups?” Clint asked, reveling in the sound of it. 

“They’re $30,000 a pop, so don’t get lazy, all right?” Stark replied. “Though it looks like you were doing pretty well without them.” 

“Yeah, great.” Clint shook his head—a really dumb idea, but Stark, as usual, just didn’t get it. “Might as well not wear them at all, right?” 

Stark backed off a little. “All I’m saying is, you make being a deaf superhero look easy.” 

Clint let it go. A deaf superhero—stuff of legends, for damn sure. He looked up at Natasha and grinned. Or maybe he just had teammates who excelled at showing up in the nick of time. 

“Bet you wouldn’t last a day,” he tossed off, laying back down and closing his eyes, enjoying the sound of the engine and the breathing of the two people beside him. 

Stark was quiet for a long moment and Clint started to drift off before hearing the reply. 

“Maybe someday we’ll see about that…” 

Clint snorted as he slipped into sleep. _Sucker._

******  
the end


End file.
